The HP Handheld users conference held in Minnesota last year was great. The talks and the people were fun and stimulating. Top HP personnel plus representatives from Thaddeus Computing (that's us), Global Connections, EduCALC, Shier systems and others were available to give talks, say hello, and demo their products.
This informal conference has a long history a history almost as long as HP has provided us with innovative, useful handheld products. Volunteers typically devote many hours to putting together the talks and to organizing a comfortable facility.
This year's conference promises to have many useful sessions on HP Palmtops, on the OmniGo 100, and on HP Calculators both for technical and non-technical users. EduCALC and other vendors will continue the tradition of giving away lots of door prizes at the end of the show.
David Shier and Avi Meshar of Shier Systems and Richard Nelson of EduCALC have taken the lead organizing the conference. It will be held at the Marriott Hotel in Anaheim near Disneyland. (That means you can finally justify your interest in the Palmtop to your family by rewarding them with Disneyland right before school starts.)
Kheng Joo Khaw, the head of the HP Handheld division in Singapore will be the keynote speaker. Khaw is extremely open to feedback and to talking with users and developers. Expect to meet others from Hewlett-Packard as well as many vendors of HP Palmtop products.
If you are interested in giving a talk or demonstrating a product, or if you have input as to what you want to see at the conference, contact David at 805-371-9391 or Richard at 714-582-2637 ext 106, or visit the conference web page at http://www.shier.com/~hhc96. For more information and registration information, see the sidebar.
I look forward to seeing you there.
PC in Your Pocket
As a reader of The HP Palmtop Paper, you more than anyone know the value of having your Palmtop always available. Many users have been frustrated and surprised why more people haven't heard about the Palmtop and why more aren't using it. Hopefully, we've come up with a partial solution.
For almost five years this publication has profiled users, reviewed products, and provided tips and techniques. We decided to take some of the best of that material, condense it, and tell the story of Palmtop computing in an easily accessible, easy-to-read book about the Palmtop.
Regular columnist Ed Keefe volunteered to put it together. We borrowed from the format (but not the awful title) of the Dummy and Idiot books to create an inviting, open, graphically interested look. We oriented the book around what people do rather than around the computer. It is written in Ed's clear and friendly easy-to-read style. You'll find excerpts from many of our most popular HP Palmtop Paper articles such as our physician and Marine profiles, and our Steven Covey time management application. To give you a feeling for the book, see the sidebar containing the table of contents.
Who is the book for?
The book is intended for both Palmtop users and potential Palmtop users. As you might infer from the table of contents, we don't go into the depth that we do in The HP Palmtop Paper. Therefore, strong technical HP Palmtop users will not find the book meaty. What the book does is give an overview. It gives the reader an understanding of the usefulness and flexibility of having a pocket-sized computer always available by providing many real-life examples.
Palmtop users will find the book full of useful and creative ideas. The book is also ideal for friends and colleagues that you think would profit from having a Palmtop.
Where to buy the book
The book will be available this Fall in book stores or can be ordered directly from us.
It looks like the book will be aggressively distributed to all major book store chains in the U.S. We found an excellent U.S. distributor who to our pleasant surprise was quite excited to work with us. (Later we found out that the brother-in-law of one of the principals wrote a Palmtop profile for us last year!)
Subscribers can also order the book directly from us. We ask that you have patience as to its delivery. We are planning to have the first printing completed by July, but these things have a way of taking longer than we expect.
The book comes with a The HP Palmtop Paper subscription offer and an offer for a disk full of the freeware and shareware mentioned in the book. A free copy of the disk will be sent to subscribers who order the book directly from us.